Deluge
by TB's LMC
Summary: A neverending rainstorm threatens to bring about the next Great Flood and keeps International Rescue hopping. But when a woman they're in the process of saving becomes someone else, it stops them cold in their rescuing tracks. Who is she? Who's the other woman they'd thought they were saving? And will their greatest enemy not only be their undoing, but the whole planet's?
1. Chapter One

_**Credit** : Thank you to Jaimi-Sam for allowing me to use Ruth as Grandma Tracy's first name (first appearing in her story 'Secrets and Lies') and for the encouragement to finish this tale!_

 _ **Author's Note** : While Jaimi-Sam did read the early drafts of the first few chapters, the edits I've done and the bulk of this story are completely unbeta'd. _Ergo _, if you hate it or there are horrendous errors, it's all on me. Grin._

* * *

 **DELUGE**

* * *

Chapter One

It was raining as she stepped out onto the dimly lit street. That fact was no surprise; it had been raining for weeks. Pulling her jean jacket more tightly around her thin body, she hunched forward as her feet began the journey to her destination. No other souls were out; most didn't dare to leave the arguable safety of their homes. No one knew when the flood wall would burst. It was better, they all thought, to be inside rather than out when that happened. And it would happen. It was only a matter of time.

Every step she took splashed four inches of water up her shins. Ten inches of it filled the street, nearly ready to overflow the curbs. The drains were all clogged; the supermarket had long since been emptied. The town's one gas station had run dry four days ago, and the only access to this out-of-the-way speck of dust in the middle of the nondescript Midwest – a bridge spanning the very river which now threatened their entire existence – had washed out more than a week before that.

But her mother was in desperate need of help, and with Jeannie gone, Jan was the only one left to help her. Grasping her necklace's silver Christian cross charm tightly in her hand, for it had always given her strength in her darkest moments, on she sloshed through the slowly rising water. On and on and on until at last she reached the intersection of the tiny town's crossroads. She looked up to find the only four real stores they had on the four corners of Main Street and Canfield Road looking abandoned. Foreboding.

Dead.

Fern Thompson had closed the post office once news of the washed-out bridge came from old Davey Kitkowski, after he'd tried making it to his son's farm three miles out of town. The tiny postal hub shared space with Chaplin's Rx which had its own entrance. Only a thin wall separated one from the other.

Sav-Mor Grocery stood dark and looming, while the only signs of life at Troy's Gas & Auto Repair were in the echoes of the four junked cars parked in its lot. Jan's eyes at last came to rest on Cammie's Clothes 4 Less, owned by her best friend Denise DeLong's mother.

Jan hadn't seen Denise in over two weeks. As soon as the rains had started, Denise's dad had insisted his family leave town. Jan didn't know why; she hadn't even been able to say good-bye. She felt like crying when she thought of the girl she'd known since they were toddlers, but the only tears she could make anymore came from rain drops rolling down her cheeks.

Looking both ways more out of habit than necessity, Jan kept her head low, the rain drumming endlessly upon her long strawberry blonde hair as she turned and crossed Canfield Road. The water reached a third of the way up her shins, splashing to her knees in the wake caused by each step she took. As she made to step up to the sidewalk, the water in the road breached the confines of the street and followed her to the pharmacy's front door.

Slowly the hand that had been tucked under the jean jacket pulled away. She looked at the small hatchet she held; never before in her life had she done something like this. Not even the night her father had died when the tanker truck had overturned four houses down. She closed her eyes, letting the rain weep for her as she remembered standing on the sidewalk watching him climb the side of the big blue overturned tractor-trailer cab. He was the only one who'd had the courage to go after the injured driver. And after pulling that man to safety, he was the only one still too close to the fuel-carrying semi when it exploded.

It had been raining that night, too.

Opening her eyes, she raised the hatchet. The sound of shattering glass barely penetrated the steady deluge from the sky. Jan cleared away shards of glass from the old wooden frame of the door and stepped into a completely empty store. The air smelled stale. Moldy. Utter darkness made her shiver more than the chill of being soaked through. From the left pocket of her jacket she produced a small palm-length flashlight. She clicked it on and shone it toward the back of the store, where the pharmacist's counter was. Jan made her way along the aisle that had once held over-the-counter cold medication and painkillers. Only dust and the remnants of a few torn packages remained.

Her mom had known for some time that she was dying. At first she'd ignored the various aches and pains that had been plaguing her, but then at Jan's insistence she'd finally gone to the nearest big town forty miles distant to see a doctor. The diagnosis one month later had been Stage Four breast cancer. Four months of treatment had followed, making her mom too ill to attend Jan's college graduation one hundred miles away.

Rather than moving on to law school, Jan had put her future on hold to return home and care for her mother in whatever time she had left. Merely two weeks before the bridge washed out, Leeann Jenkins had checked out of the hospital for the last time.

Sam, the pharmacist, had locked both the roll-down security shutters over the high counter and the small access door to its left before vacating his store a week earlier. Jan moved to the access door, lifted the hatchet, and began whacking at the knob in earnest. The grunt she emitted with each blow the hatchet delivered echoed in the still, damp air.

When the door finally gave, Jan dropped the hatchet to the floor, arms unable to so much as hold it anymore. She lifted her leg to take the high step into a place forbidden to all but Sam for as long as she could remember.

A strange and eerie sound stopped her leg mid-movement. She turned to look toward the front of the store. Security blinds were drawn over the bay windows on either side of the door, giving her only the window she'd smashed to see through.

Her heart stopped in her chest. Because while nothing looked any different out that small four-feet-tall by two-feet-wide glimpse at the street, the sound coming to her ears even over the beating of the rain itself, was unmistakable.

The flood wall had burst.


	2. Chapter Two

Chapter Two

"Hold her steady, Virg."

Strong hands gripped the steering yoke until the whites of his knuckles shone through tawny skin. Beads of sweat mustached his upper lip as Virgil Tracy's every muscle grew taut with tension. With complete control. With the knowledge that he and the giant ship that responded to his every twitch were all that stood between life and death for the lone figure on the roof below.

"Two degrees left!" barked Field Commander Scott Tracy.

A slight course correction. Eyes darting from instrument to dial. From screen to readout.

"Steady," whispered through the speakers, the voice of Alan Tracy as he swung perilously beneath the nose of _Thunderbird Two_. "I can almost touch her."

Within the cockpit there wasn't a sound to be heard save for the hum of _Two_ 's engines and Alan's breaths in sharp, staccato cadences and rhythms that brought life to his every thought and movement without words. Somewhere in the back of his mind, Virgil wondered if Scott wasn't holding his breath, the lives of a stranger and his baby brother hanging by a thread strung from the hatch in _Two_ 's nose.

"John, give me a foot, max, slow reel."

An indicator light to the right, signaling the winch was being operated. Virgil watched the numbers change in one-tenth-of-an-inch increments as their brother John slowly, ever-so-slowly, let out the cable as asked.

Not one of them could see any other, save for Scott as he hovered opposite his sister ship in _Thunderbird One_. His eyes, Virgil was sure, were glued to Alan's rain-slick form.

The rains had kept International Rescue operating in ten-hour rotations for thirteen days, and there was no end in sight. They'd all become used to everything being caked in mud. The equipment. The 'birds. Themselves.

So many had been saved.

Too many had died.

This tiny town had been thought deserted or at the very least, all its inhabitants dead. _Thunderbirds One_ and _Two_ had been nearby _en route_ from one medium-sized town to another as they fought Mother Nature and fatigue to bring hope to the helpless. A heat signature had registered. Scott had diverted to investigate. His clipped tones had spoke of weariness, yet had been interlaced with joy at having found one more human being alive, rather than lifeless amongst the fields of bodies being washed away in ditches and rivers-turned-white water rapids.

Wondering fleetingly how Gordon was faring with the handful of sick and injured people in _Two_ 's pod, Virgil held himself so very still, his eyes constantly reassuring his mind that his course had not changed so much as a fraction of a degree.

"Okay," came a grunted half-whispered update from Alan. "My feet are on the roof."

Scott had seen a hatch open in the corner of the flat roof as he'd hovered nearby trying to pinpoint the life sign his computers told him was there. Seconds later this woman had appeared, and waved at Scott when _One_ 's powerful spotlight turned in her direction.

They almost had her.

And then it would be on to find the next victim. And the next. And the next.

"Some people are saying it's the end of the world," Gordon had told them just after they'd brought four survivors from the next town over aboard. "Like Noah and the Flood."

Virgil had seen nothing in John's or Scott's faces as stone masks hid their private thoughts. Alan's eyes had grown just a bit wider as Gordon had turned and taken his leave to escort the patients to the pod.

John had at last broken the silence. "Do you really think it is?" he'd asked so softly Virgil could barely hear him over _Two_ 's whine. "The end of the world?"

His hands had suddenly seemed the most interesting things in the world to Virgil, eyes moving down to settle on them. Perhaps to avoid seeing fear climb into the features of his brothers' faces. Perhaps to avoid showing them his own.

"Well, if it is," Scott had finally replied, getting all eyes to turn his way, "we're not going down without a fight."

And so now, they were fighting. On less sleep and even less enthusiasm they forged ahead, their father in constant contact, their agents and auxiliary units the world over having to deal with disasters in their own communities as the rains expanded beyond the confines of the US. As they threatened nearly every square inch of Earth.

Maybe it _was_ the end of it all. Maybe their efforts were futile. Maybe they'd have to return to Tracy Island to launch _Thunderbird Three_ for their space station, just to survive. Their dad had already agreed that whatever people were aboard _Two_ when and if that call was made, were coming with them, and as many more as the two 'birds could carry, to capacity.

They couldn't save everybody, but at least they'd be in space. Their own sort of ark, Alan had noted in the strange silence that had followed Jeff Tracy's directive.

Virgil heard a sound that made his heart skip a beat; the clap of thunder was loud even through _Two_ 's thick hull. Before he could even ask the question, Scott announced, "That storm cell we've been watching is here. Alan, you've got to get that woman strapped onto you, _now_." Calm. In command.

Afraid.

Virgil sat there holding his breath, waiting for the word to be given so John could start winching Alan and his charge back to safety. So Virgil could pull them up above the storm clouds to some modicum of safety.

And then…the unthinkable.


	3. Chapter Three

Chapter Three

Jan looked wildly about her as the first pre-wave licked its way through the broken window in the front door. Louder. Closer. A freight train made of water barreling in to destroy her town. The flashlight clattered to the floor, landing at an odd angle against her foot. She looked up to find it spotlighting a trapdoor in the ceiling at the far end of the pharmacist's shelves.

Louder.

Closer.

She scrambled along the inside of the counter. Containers clanking, bottles rattling, pills shaking in their cylinders. Something fell from a shelf; the sound of shattering glass rang through the air like a klaxon. Danger. The smell of rubbing alcohol. Another bottle breaking. _Danger_! The gagging stench of ammonia.

The center of three tall metal shelving units swayed slightly as she ran past. Her flashlight shook under the vibration of approaching doom, making shadows creep along the wall as she rounded the last case and in her fight for purchase, slammed against it. Small boxes launched from their perches, whispering through the air, her hand swiping everything away, running, making it to the back corner. Pungent aromas told of broken receptacles, their lifesaving medicines soon to be swallowed by the water that would consume them all.

 _Mother_.

There was nothing Jan could do for her now. It wouldn't be the cancer that took her, after all.

It would be the water.

Louder.

Plain old ordinary water.

Closer.

She hoisted herself up onto the counter. A desk calendar slid beneath her foot. Grabbing the shelf to keep her balance, a mug of pens sent skittering across worn wood, flying to pieces when it plummeted to the floor.

 _Have to make it_.

She reached up blindly, her flashlight's beam unable to turn corners to light the way. There. She felt it bump her skin. There! A string against the side of her hand, the metal washer tied to the end of it smacking into her knuckle. She twisted her fingers round it, yanked, yanked again, pulled harder and harder yet. A loud creak, a painful groan as though the door knew it would die with this building in mere seconds.

 _Seconds_.

Slithering, croaking hiss and protestation of seldom-used metal joints as the wooden ladder piled atop the trapdoor gave in to gravity's inexorable pull. Slamming to the floor, reverberating through the cabinet just before Jan leapt to the ladder's rungs. She slipped. The wall of water slammed into the side of the building. She screamed, scrabbling, feet and arms refusing to move in synch to propel her upward. She had to _go_!

 _Now_!

A giant whoosh as the front windows of the Rx imploded. What was left of the store fixtures ripped from their holds on the floor. Plaster cracking. Bricks popping out of walls like overheated popcorn kernels. Her feet disappeared above just as the wave tore the rolling doors away from the pharmacy counter's windows.

Jan flailed around the roof in a panic, heavy rains pelting her face with the force of a tornadic wind. Lightning flashed in the skies above, the thunder drowned out by…her jaw dropped in disbelief as she turned to her left when a zig-zagging bolt of lightning lit western sky. The wave that now threatened to remove the entire store from its foundations…was only the beginning.

She stared open-mouthed, unable to scream or cry or curse or even move as yet another burst of light showed the true terror still headed her way. Forced into shape by miles of manmade obstacles…houses and roads, outbuildings and sidewalks…a wave unlike any she'd ever before seen moved closer and closer in stop-motion animation with each angry slice of lightning through the night. Followed by a second wave. A third.

 _Revelations_.

The Bible had been right.

The Rx trembled beneath her feet, to match the trembling of her body.

She sank to her knees, hand clutching the cross tightly, eyes glued to the approaching wall of death. Her chin shook as grief unlike any she had ever known welled up within her. She was supposed to have become a successful lawyer. She was supposed to have met a man, gotten married, had children. She was supposed to have lived a long, busy, happy life and retired somewhere warm, tropical, wonderful.

An open-mouthed yet silent scream as her soul begged for mercy. Begged for God to help her, to send some kind of miracle to save her from meeting St. Peter just yet.

The wave loomed, swallowing the volunteer fire station half a block distant in its detritus-filled, endless maw. A loud, deafening clap of thunder, pins and needles as electricity surrounded her and in that instant, Jan looked up. White-hot and straight as an arrow, the bolt of lightning ran side-to-side and for a handful of seconds she felt weightless. Her stomach flipped end over end, heart in her throat, gulping to not throw up, arms waving, fingers trying to find something to grab hold of.

Feeling the pain of landing on her back hard, as though dropped from a great height. Unable to get her body to obey. Eyes wide open. Widening even as she tried to remember how to breathe. And there above her, as lightning flashed and flashed, lighting up the sky like the day, was something she'd never laid eyes on before.

A loud gasp as oxygen traveled back into her lungs.

Huge. Green. Yellow stripe. A man swinging wildly beneath the nose, dropping suddenly until his feet were planted firmly on the roof in front of her.

A spotlight from the monster flying above shone down, framing his blond hair in a halo like those drawn round the heads of saints in her church's stained glass windows.

An angel come to take her to the Pearly Gates? Or the answer to her prayers?

His face registered surprise when the spotlight shone in hers. She struggled to push herself up to a sitting position, squinting, using one arm to shield her from its glare. She caught sight of his white-gloved hand reaching out to her. Blindly groped. The light shifted away. His head whipped to the right.

"Look out!" he yelled.

She felt something hit the entire right side of her body and then…darkness.


	4. Chapter Four

Chapter Four

" _Jesus_!" Scott swore into every open channel they had. "Virgil, _report_!"

All alarms built into _Two_ roared to life as lightning enveloped her in its wicked embrace. Blinded, his hands gripped the yoke as Virgil blinked and blinked trying to see. A full minute of cacophony and then suddenly silence rushed into the cockpit as though he'd been swallowed beneath the surface of the placid ocean surrounding their island paradise. His ears popped.

"Hang on!" he shouted, fingers flying everywhere at once as he checked, rechecked, triple-checked, started diagnostics, flipped every chart, graph and readout screen online and scanned numbers, words, letters, reports.

"Virgil!" Scott barked.

"This is John. Other than getting tossed around, I'm FAB."

"Gordon from the pod. We're all okay; luckily our patients were strapped into their beds."

"Virg?"

"Systems show green," Virgil finally responded, though he knew the disbelief in his voice wouldn't be lost on his eldest brother.

" _Thunderbird One_ to Alan, report!"

"What the _hell_ just happened up there? You tryin' to kill me?"

"Not this time," Virgil replied, tamping down the fear, forcing his voice to its even, dulcet tones. Every other second he was pushing another button, twisting another dial, reading another diagnostic on one of the multiple screens before him. And none of it made sense.

"Lightning," Scott advised. Then added, "I think."

"You _think_?" John's voice held no small trace of sarcasm.

"It was blinding," Scott added, and his own tone was enough to make the hairs on the back of Virgil's neck stand on end.

"I've got the victim strapped into the second harness," Alan reported, "but…"

"But what?" Virgil asked as he checked the primary winch's standalone operating system for the fifth time. No way was he going to let John turn that baby on unless he knew for sure it'd reel his little brother in safely.

"Well, she's…I mean, she's not…"

"Alan?" Scott prompted.

 _Big brother voice_ , Virgil noted when the Winch Operating System gave him green lights across the board. "Okay on the winch, John."

"FAB. Ready, Al?"

"Ready."

His voice sounded steady. Strong. Yet…unsure, somehow.

Odd.

"Status of the victim."

"She got knocked out by a piece of debris, Scott, but I think she's—oh, _shit_! _Wave_! John, get us up now, now, _now_!"

"What the—?"

"Starting winch!"

" _Faster_! Haul fucking _ass_!"

" _Damn_ it!"

"Alan, what is—oh, my God."

"Scott? What?" The hairs on Virgil's entire _body_ were now standing on end.

"Twenty degrees starboard!"

Virgil swung _Two_ 's powerful spotlight to those precise coordinates and felt his jaw drop. "My _God_ ," he whispered.

A wall of black was headed their way.

Headed _Alan's_ way.

"Vertical ascent, Virgil, _hurry_! Alan, hang _on_!" Scott ordered.

Out of his peripheral vision, Virgil saw _One_ 's VTOL roar to life, the 'bird rising vertically so fast that it was out of sight before he could blink. _Two_ 's four VTOLs ignited.

"Oh, sweet _Jesus_!" Alan cried out. "You're gonna burn us to death!"

"John, stop the winch! Alan, hold on!" Virgil yelled as he jabbed the button that shut the VTOLs off, then started Two's powerful antigravity device. He pulled back on the yoke so hard it banged against his ribs.

It was all he could do without killing Alan and the woman outright.

 _Two_ 's spatial, antigrav failure and lift warnings sliced through the air like white-hot swords, piercing his eardrums as he fought to keep her level in the winds that buffeted _Two_ like she was made of paper mache. Mentally going through a dozen calculations for how to get Alan and the woman above the wave in time, his heart raced as fast as his mind.

"Faster!" Alan cried out, pure fear punctuating the electrified atmosphere in the cockpit. Virgil used every ounce of strength and control he had to keep the great green transporter from tilting as she climbed far faster than she'd ever been designed to using nothing but the antigravs.

"Higher," he heard Scott mutter somewhere on the periphery of his consciousness.

Virgil slammed the butt of his left hand down to silence the alarms. He lost a good layer of enamel as his teeth ground together, sweat covering nearly every inch of exposed skin and starting to soak through his uniform. _Two_ protested, shaking so violently that Virgil wondered if she wouldn't just come apart at the seams.

Rising to his feet, Virgil's arms strained, muscles bulging, lips in a tight, thin line as he pulled back while _Two_ tried correcting and slowing – she'd only ever used antigrav for landings and takeoffs, not for rapid ascent. "No, baby, come on, do what I say, come on," he hissed through his teeth and then just like that, it was over.

"Alan's clear!" Scott shouted.

Virgil collapsed into the pilot's chair, slowly easing the yoke forward. _Two_ stopped shaking and the familiar whine of her jet engines settled back into the atmosphere. There, floating high above swirling gray-black clouds, everything suddenly seemed so peaceful, as though what had just happened, hadn't.

"Alan?" John said. Virgil could well imagine he was looking down through the open hatch trying for a visual.

There was no response.

"I can't see him!" Virgil heard the ramped-up adrenaline coursing through Scott's veins in his voice as though it produced some sort of discordant harmony that laced every word he spoke. "Damn it, hold on!"

A bright swath of light appearing to the right told Virgil that Scott had activated _One_ 's spotlight.

"Where is he?" John asked. "Virg, gimme the rear pod spot!"

Virgil flicked a switch to his left. "You have control."

"Swing it back," Scott suggested as his own light made a search out of concentric circles beneath _Two_ 's belly.

Silence.

 _Dead_ silence.

"Guys? A little help down here?"

Virgil closed his eyes and took in a breath he hadn't been aware of denying himself.

"Alan," Scott breathed. "Report."

"You did that on purpose," John groused, but Virgil could hear relief hiding beneath sarcasm.

"Hardly," Alan replied, sounding tired. Oh, so tired. "We got tangled harness to cable and my 'com was out for a sec. Electrical short. Took a bit for the redundancy to kick in."

"Can I finally winch you up?"

"Yeah, assuming there aren't even bigger waves headed our way."

"All the way up here?" John asked incredulously.

"Hey, after all the shit we've seen, I take nothing for granted," was Alan's reply.

"How does a wave that large form out here in the plains?" Virgil wondered.

"That sucker was twice as tall as the building Alan was standing on," Scott said, finally able to exhale enough to string a sentence together. "I don't know."

"It almost swallowed me and this lady like Jonah's whale," Alan remarked, a small edge of amusement draining the last of tension from Virgil's body. "There's just one thing."

"What's that?" John asked as Virgil watched the winch monitor count down the number of feet left until Alan reached the safety of the hatch.

"You're going to tell me it's because I'm traumatized after that _Cirque du Soleil_ stunt Virg just pulled, but…I would swear to you on a stack of Grandma's apple pies that this isn't the same woman I winched down there to save."

Scott's voice was laced with concern. "What do you mean? There was only one life sign, and she was the one I saw climb through the trapdoor."

"I'm not so sure about that," Alan replied.

"Almost up," John interrupted.

"There aren't any other life signs. What makes you think she isn't the woman I saw?"

"Hang on…gotcha," John said.

Virgil heard the buckles of the harness clink as John and Alan opened them.

"Holy crap." This from John.

"What?" Scott asked.

"He's right. This isn't the same woman. When you told us to come join you, that you'd found a victim, you said she was in her seventies."

"Yeah, so?"

Alan grunted, presumably helping John unload the victim. After a swish of squishy wet fabric – the harness being removed, Virgil mentally noted – Alan explained. "Scott, the woman I just brought up to _Thunderbird Two_ is no seventy-something."

Silence filled the airwaves. Broken by Scott's, "What are you talking about? I had Cam A zoomed right in on her face. She couldn't have been more than ten, twenty years younger than Grandma at the most."

"No way," John countered. "Look."

At that moment, Virgil's primary viewscreen came to life. Being held tightly to Alan's chest was an unconscious woman. And her face, though partially hidden against his body, showed them all that both Alan and John were right.

This girl couldn't have been out of her twenties, never mind in her seventies.

"That's not possible," Scott whispered.

Virgil stared at the live feed, watching Alan and John move toward the sliding door that led to the pod. That feed was immediately replaced by Scott's visage.

Scott looked at him.

Virgil looked back.

"That's not who I saw," Scott finally said. He shook his head. "I swear it's not."

Virgil believed his brother. But he also believed his own eyes.

Right now, those two beliefs simply weren't coming together.


	5. Chapter Five

Chapter Five

For a handful of seconds she was back in her freshman year of college, when the freedom of being away from home for the first time had collided with the naivety of an eighteen-year old kid who thinks they're indestructible, all of which had resulted in a five-alarm hangover that'd kept her out of commission for the better part of two days. She wondered if her PoliSci professor had ever figured out she was hung over rather than premenstrual. Sometimes it paid to be female.

Then reality kicked back in. She wasn't eighteen anymore. And she most certainly was well beyond her freshman year. Jan's eyes popped open. She squeezed them shut just as quickly, the glare of overhead lights far too bright.

Her head was pounding. Her mouth was dry. A high-pitched whine buzzed somewhere on the peripheral of her hearing range and a strange, methodic beeping sound seemed determined to notch the headache up bit by bit as it relentlessly continued its audio assault.

"Hello," a soft voice said.

Jan groaned in response. Not exactly eloquent, but definitely accurate to her state of being, she thought.

"Are you with me?"

"Lights," she managed to grind out, unwilling to put her pupils through that torture again.

The brightness of what lay beyond her eyelids dimmed to the point where Jan peeked one open to check. Ah, bliss…near-total darkness. She opened her eyes all the way and took in her surroundings. It looked like a hospital. It smelled like a hospital. But it was a room with only one bed and two walls were nearly all windows. Beyond which, she noted were four men standing there staring at her.

Four absolutely drop-dead _gorgeous_ men.

Her eyes widened, then snapped to the man standing next to her as he gently lifted her wrist and began to take her pulse. There was something about him that made her feel instantly at ease.

"Welcome back," he said. There was no smile on his face, yet she felt like he was happy she was awake. Maybe even happy she was alive.

That was when it all came pouring down on her as surely as the weeks' worth of rain had been doing prior to her town being destroyed. Jan hitched in a sob. Her mother. Who knew where her sister was. Or Denise. Or anyone that she'd grown up with. Gone to college with. Her friends, her pastor, Sam the pharmacist. Gone now, unless whoever rescued her had rescued them, too.

She watched the brown-haired man's face, half-covered by garish blue glasses that seemed like a throwback to the sixties, as he laid her arm back down atop the sheet and blanket covering her body. His features were almost unnaturally placid, giving nothing away. Her eyes moved back to the wall opposite her bed where two men the same height, one obviously older with salt-and-pepper colored hair, and one younger with red-gold hair, stood shoulder-to-shoulder watching. Through the windows in the wall to her right, she saw two blond men. The taller's skin had a sort of golden-tanned hue to it, while the other man, only an inch or two shorter than his companion, seemed to have been lying out on the beach too much with his dark brown tan. That one seemed vaguely familiar to her, but she couldn't quite work out how.

"Where am I?" she whispered as the man next to her tapped something small that he was holding in his hand. "What is that?"

"You're in a hospital," the man replied. "And this is a, ah, micro tablet."

A micro what? She'd never heard of a micro tablet. Sounded pretty techy.

"Thirsty."

He nodded and grabbed something out of her line of sight, bringing it forward until she could see it was a plastic cup with a plastic straw. Slowly his arm slid between her back and the bed, and she felt him pull her forward and up until she was sitting well enough that he handed her the cup.

"Thank you."

Again the man nodded. "Excuse me for a, ah, moment, will you?"

 _That stammer of his is kind of adorable_ , she thought as she took her first sip of water. It soothed her parched throat. She watched as her room companion exited and grouped the four gorgeous men together to talk to them.

Yes, it looked like a hospital all right…except for what was beyond the men.

Jan frowned as a door slid open. On the other side she saw what looked upon first glance like a mad scientist's laboratory. But the door slid shut again before she could really determine what she'd seen. And the person who'd just come through the door caught her attention, too.

It was a tall, beautiful blonde woman who seemed to have stepped right off the cover of a magazine. Her hair and makeup were _perfect_ ; Jan had never seen anyone look that good outside of a Photoshopped picture.

But it was what happened next that really got Jan's attention. Got _everybody's_ attention.


	6. Chapter Six

Chapter Six

Brains glanced at the woman on the bed, then returned his gaze to where four Tracys and a Creighton-Ward waited expectantly for him to answer Jeff's question. "Ah, well, the, ah…the preliminary tests I ran show, ah, nothing out of the, ah, ordinary about her. She's normal in, ah, every way a-and in good health, too, though a, ah, little on the thin side."

"I've been unable to match her fingerprints using any database in the world," Penny advised. "Those are still running thanks to the underground bunkers that are thus far unaffected by the deluge."

Jeff frowned. Looked at Alan. "You're sure there wasn't anyone else."

"No, Dad. _One_ was recording the entire time. You saw the footage. You know as well as I do that _she_ ," he pointed through the window toward the bed for emphasis, "is _not_ the woman that emerged from that trapdoor when Scott first got on-scene."

"And we still haven't been able to explain what that supposed lightning was that cocooned _Two_ ," John said as Alan shook his head in agreement. "Her systems are acting like nothing happened, even though Virgil said every single alarm she had went off at the exact moment it struck."

"I'm going to assume that the fact we haven't heard from him and Scott yet means they still haven't dug anything out of her memory banks," Alan mused.

"Fair bet," Gordon agreed.

"I'm not entirely certain it was wise to bring the young woman here," Penelope noted, eyes fixed on the person in question. "That's not exactly International Rescue's MO."

"There weren't any hospitals left operating in the vicinity," Jeff said quietly, pain fleeting across his face like a ghostly apparition. He shook his head. "The others that the boys managed to rescue had family in the Rocky Mountains that they wanted to be taken to, but with this woman unconscious, we really had nowhere to send her."

"We should be back out there helping people," Alan interjected. "Not standing around here with this one person."

"You know Virg won't take _Two_ up again until he figures out what the fault is," John reminded him.

Alan scowled.

Brains, having been watching and listening, moved his eyes down to the micro tablet in his hand when it beeped.

"What is it?" Jeff asked.

Finger tapping, sliding, swishing and gliding across the little screen, Brains soon had an answer. "It's from Virgil," he stated. Then his eyes widened. "That's impossible."

"What is, Brains?"

But Brains didn't have a chance to reply.

The entire structure surrounding them deep within the bowels of Tracy Island's volcanic tube shook violently. Alarms wailed. Everyone scattered to various computers and monitors in the quarantine observation room as Brains punched up the island's diagnostics.

"Holy shit!" Alan breathed. "Just look!"

Brains turned to see Alan staring at the flatscreen monitor hanging in the back corner of the room. And what showed from four of their external cameras in the four-quadrant video feed told him precisely what'd just happened.

The viewscreen to the left of the four-quadrant monitor blazed to life. "Dad, come in!"

"We're here, Scott. Everyone's okay. You?"

"We're all right. What the _hell_ was that?"

"A wave," John said. "Just like the one that nearly got Alan."

Scott's face paled.

Not a word was spoken.

"How's the island holding up?" Jeff's voice was so strained Brains wondered if he might not rupture a vocal cord.

Turning his attention back to the diagnostic screen, Brains shook his head. "Nothing's been compromised, but I imagine your landscaping's no longer, ah, in place."

His attempt at humor fell flat.

Jeff's watch beeped. "Kyrano? Where's Mother? Tin-Tin?"

"We are all fine," Kyrano replied. Jeff exhaled softly as his friend continued. "We were in the kitchen when the wave struck."

"Why didn't our proximity alarms warn us?" Gordon asked.

Brains blinked. "Good question." Then he frowned as he brought up the diagnostic data from precisely one minute before the wave had hit.

"What's with the face?" John asked, coming to stand just behind his right shoulder.

Brains looked up at the taller man and knew the exact moment that John realized what he was seeing on-screen.

Jeff maneuvered himself in between them, eyes already glued to the monitor.

"It's not even registering the wave," John explained, shaking his head and reaching around Brains to tap some commands into the holographic keyboard. "That's not possible."

"We seem to be saying that an awful lot lately," Alan muttered as he move to join them on Brains' left. His eyes widened at what he saw. "But it's true."

"How can it not be registering?" Jeff asked.

"It's the same as what happened with _Two_ ," John noted, turning to look at his dad. "For some reason, even though the alarms went off the moment it hit, the systems aren't registering an event of any kind."

"Jeff," Kyrano said through the feed still live on his wrist communicator, "every tree on this island has been felled. The plants and bushes and flowers are everywhere. If you wish to launch _Thunderbird Two_ again, we'll have to clear the runway of the fallen palms."

"The pool's completely filled with debris," Tin-Tin said from a short distance away. "It won't open for _One_ to launch as-is."

"My God," Jeff's mother said somewhere off-screen. "It really _is_ the end of the world."

They could hear the rain still pouring down in the background of where Kyrano's usually placid face now showed a line of worry that had formed between his eyebrows and seemed prepared to remain in place.

Then, a banging from behind them. As one they turned to look at the hospital-like quarantine room.

Inside was an older woman with her fist against the window, staring at them wide-eyed with fear. She looked like she'd just been washed in on the wave that'd slammed into Tracy Island.

The younger woman was nowhere to be seen.


	7. Chapter Seven

Chapter Seven

Jan screamed.

Rain pelted her body like someone had just unleashed a barrage of rubber bullets at her.

She whirled around, then felt herself being pushed sideways by a fierce wind. Catching herself against the knee-high wall surrounding the roof, she could only stare at her surroundings.

The roof of the Rx building.

She looked up. Nothing hovering there. No big, green flying thing. No smaller silver rocket plane.

No one else in sight.

How the _hell_?

Jan ventured a look over the side of the roof. There was no street. There were no sidewalks. There _were_ houses, but they were only half-visible in what was supposed to be day, but was barely beyond the register of a moonlit night.

As far as the eye could see: water.

She sank to her knees. She'd just been in a room. A hospital room in some kind of weird place that she knew damn well wasn't any kind of hospital she was familiar with.

There'd been men, and a woman.

The hands of the one at her bedside had been cold, just like doctors and nurses, though he hadn't been dressed as one. His voice had been soft. His eyes through those thick, nerdy glasses, had been kind.

She _had_ to have been dreaming. Hallucinating. Knocked unconscious, out all this time, somehow surviving the wall of water she'd seen coming her way and just conjuring up the entire event. That had to be it, especially considering that abnormally huge green planes and silver rockets with wings didn't exist.

But without a boat, without any other human beings in sight, what was she going to do?

Her mind supplied the only answer it had.

 _Die_.

* * *

He'd already been pushed to the uppermost floors of his pyramidal base of operations four hours earlier. Now it appeared he and those few of his followers that remained were going to have to move up yet one more floor.

After that, the roof would be the only place left, and it wasn't big enough to hold more than him and a handful others. No matter. The priests and priestesses of darkness wouldn't be around by the time that final move was made.

Watching the various news reports, closed captioning telling him what their muted speakers could not, and in multiple languages, he wondered at the timing of this catastrophe now befalling Earth. Took it all as an omen that his desire to start the process for doing what he'd been planning on doing these past six years had been right on the money.

As if there'd been any doubt in his mind to begin with.

Only buildings as tall as his remained habitable in this, his home country of Malaysia. And he knew as well as all those who were now dead, that few buildings in Sarawak, Borneo or the surrounding states and countries reached high enough to be beyond the waters of this flood. Those in Kuala Lumpur had a better chance than those from his part of the country.

Even his temple would, at some point, be swallowed whole.

He had planned for this. Even now, as he waited for the time when a final sequence of magical chants, the last casting of spells and one more move by his own demonic legions would begin, Belah Gaat didn't really care. Not about the loss of life planet-wide. Not about his own countrymen. Not about those who'd once been under his command here where he'd lived for so many years.

All he cared about was success. Because in this case, success meant escape. And escape from this world, which was crumbling all around him into a planet that would remain uninhabitable for an untold number of years, meant travel to a new place. A place where he would have enough technology brought with him from this dimension to obtain and maintain complete and total control of Earth.

An Earth that was not his own, but which would belong to him. An Earth upon which there were no Tracys. Where there was no International Rescue. Where there was nothing – and no one – to stop him.

"Master," his aide whispered from his side.

Belah looked down his nose at the somewhat frail Indonesian.

"The High Priest says it is time for the final incantation."

A smile that felt foreign as it crept across his features curved his lips unnaturally. The aide backed away with wide eyes. Nobody ever saw Gaat smile. He rather liked the effect it was having, if the stupid aide's reaction was any indication.

From the control room up a massive staircase into the cavernous fourth-floor sanctuary he strode, arms folded across his chest. Standing with their backs to him, six priests. Across a line of symbols drawn upon the stone floor in human blood, a line of six priestesses. All naked. All genuflected in prayer.

The frightened aide brought the amulet that marked these final hours as the ones that would open the door for a man known worldwide only as the Hood. The door to his future. He slipped the amulet around his neck and took his place at the head of the long row of symbols. At the foot was the only empty spot. And that would be for _her_ …when she arrived.

He could barely contain his excitement.


	8. Chapter Eight

Chapter Eight

Brains imagined the looks on the faces of Lady Penelope, Parker and the Tracys mirrored his own as he checked the older woman's vital signs. She most definitely was _not_ the woman he'd been caring for since _Two_ had returned to Tracy Island with her. Every reading was different, save for her having the same blood type; all tests came back with data that fit a seventy-something, and were completely at odds with the twenty-something's results.

And yet, there was something familiar about her. He couldn't quite put his finger on that feeling and so allowed it to filter into the vast filing system of his mind, which was always working on multiple problems, equations or questions at any given time with or without his conscious involvement.

As this woman's eyes drifted shut – he'd had to give her a sedative to keep her from quite possibly having a heart attack the way she was carrying on – Brains swallowed hard, wondering what had happened to the younger woman. She'd been there. He _knew_ she had. He'd touched her. Treated her. Helped her drink some water. But now she wasn't.

"Brains, would you join us out here, please?"

Acknowledging Jeff's request with a nod, Brains looked at the lined and weathered face of the white-haired woman now lying in the bed where only moments ago a strawberry blonde-haired woman had been. He shook his head, turned and rejoined the others in the observation room.

Jeff turned off the two-way room intercom, then looked at Lady Penelope, whose face told Brains he was about to hear something that wasn't going to make any sense.

"I've identified this woman," she said.

Brains hated it when he was right.

"Her name is Janice Jenkins. She's seventy-eight years old, and was born and raised and, near as I can tell, lived her entire life in that small farming town you rescued her from."

"You weren't able to identify the other girl," Alan said. "The one I actually rescued and brought here."

"No fingerprints in any database. But this woman," Penelope continued, "was an immediate hit. She was in your FBI's AFIS, although my contact confided his concerns over how long those servers would stay live given all the flooding."

"Her fingerprints were in AFIS?" Gordon asked. "For what, she's an old lady!"

"Hey," came the voice of their grandmother, escorted in by Scott and Virgil and trailed by Kyrano and Tin-Tin, "sometimes us old ladies like to shoplift."

"Grandma!"

Ruth Tracy chuckled. "Not me, Gordon, for heaven's sake. But Lisa Bartholomew used to. I called her Sticky Fingers for the last ten years of her life."

"You don't mean Joe and Fred's mom?"

"One and the same, Jeff." A sharp intake of air made all heads turn toward Scott. "What is it, dear?" Ruth asked, placing her hand on her grandson's forearm.

Brains saw the color drain from Scott's face. Saw his Adam's apple bob up and down as he swallowed convulsively over and over and over.

"Son?"

Scott met his dad's eyes. "It's her." As one, they turned back to look at the sleeping Janice Jenkins through the window. "That's the woman I watched come through the trapdoor onto the roof before Virg got there."

"And not the woman I rescued," Alan added.

"Brains, what the devil is going on?" Jeff demanded.

But Brains, for all his abilities, was at a complete loss. For ideas, and for words.

And so as always seemed to be the case when logic and science didn't have the answers Jeff Tracy sought, he turned – in this case, literally – toward another type of answer.

Not surprisingly, Kyrano had anticipated the request. Or maybe it was simply that he knew Jeff better than anyone. However it was he'd known, his response to the unasked question was a shake of his head before Jeff could even speak. "I'm afraid I have nothing to offer." He looked at the old woman. "All I sense from her is confusion and fear."

"Did you pick anything up from the younger girl?"

Kyrano shook his head again. "I was never in close proximity to her. I so seldom use these abilities anymore because of…"

His voice trailed off. Brains felt a chill go through him as the memory of Kyrano being attacked by his half-brother for two decades before they all caught on to what was happening, surfaced. It took Kyrano being gone for a year at a private retreat in Tibet to construct mental walls strong enough to stop the invasion of his thoughts. The Kyrano of now wasn't nearly as open as he used to be. But he was safer…as were they all.

Jeff turned away. Brains knew he wouldn't ask Kyrano to unlock the protective seals safeguarding his mind under normal circumstances. But these circumstances weren't normal. Not only did it seem that Earth was about to go through yet another Great Flood, but there was this mystery of the younger woman and older woman seeming to transpose each other whenever waves hit and lightning struck.

Brains froze.

That was a connection he hadn't made until now.

"What is it, Brains?" John asked.

 _When did I become so transparent?_ Brains wondered as the second tallest Tracy invaded his personal space. "Ah…I, uh…I don't know yet, ah, John."

The wheels of his mind were spinning. He stared at the old woman, replaying the footage from _Thunderbird One_ in his mind in a constant loop, overlaying it with what had happened here. Here. There were cameras here. He dashed over to one of the computers in the observation room. No one spoke, but Brains wouldn't have heard them even if they had.

Quickly he punched up the camera feed for this secure hospital room. He put the video footage counter back half an hour. Played it from that point. Realized there was a gaggle of Tracys surrounding him in a close-pressed semi-circle. Was used to it. Ignored it. Watched the feed.

Watched.

Waited.

The room shook on-camera.

The strawberry blonde-haired woman was sitting on the bed just as the shaking began. In the blink of an eye, she was gone. A soaking wet Janice Jenkins was sitting in her place looking for all the world like she'd just found herself somewhere she hadn't been.

"That's it," Brains breathed, rewinding and playing, rewinding and playing. He then slowed the footage down, index finger hovering over the space bar on the keyboard. The counter ticked seconds by one at a time in the lower right corner of the screen. "That's got to be it."

No one asked what he meant. Somewhere in the back of his mind he realized the Tracys by now knew enough to wait for him to come to a conclusion he was comfortable enough with to share.

"There!" he exclaimed softly, finger tapping the space bar. He looked up to find John immediately to his left, and Scott immediately to his right. "Just look."

On the screen, as clearly as the noses on all their faces, they saw something that even Brains hadn't been expecting.

He had stopped the video at the precise moment the younger woman had disappeared, and the older woman had appeared in her place. In that split second, they all clearly saw a bolt of lightning between two bodies transposed atop – or inside of – each other.

The silence as they each tried to comprehend what they were seeing was deafening. And in that silence, the answer came to Brains as clear as day.

"The necklace," he whispered, eyes meeting John's confused ones. "The older woman is wearing the same necklace as the younger."

As one they all turned to look through the windows at the sleeping Janice Jenkins. And at the glint of the silver necklace's Christian cross charm that rested atop the hospital gown she now wore.

" _Ya Allahku_ ," Kyrano said on an exhale, echoed by his daughter's "My God."

Brains swallowed hard. It didn't make sense…and yet somehow, in some way…it did.


	9. Chapter Nine

Chapter Nine

The final spell had been cast. Every one of the dark priests and priestesses were dead. Now all he had to do was wait for his sacrifice and orders to be accepted and then _she_ would join him. The Hood closed his eyes, pressed his hands together palm-flat, pushed the arches of his feet together and became so still that he barely breathed.

It wouldn't be long and the portal would be open.

* * *

Her teeth were rattling. Somehow in the haze of confusion, fear and being chilled to the bone, the sound was soothing. Constant. Consistent.

Where had the carefree days of her youth gone? Her nights spent studying until one, two, three in the morning so she could pass Pre-Law? What kind of world was this she was living in now?

A world about to cease its existence.

Another gust of wind, this time with an accompanying howl that made her look up from the relative dryness of the small hollow created by her forearms resting on her knees. It continued to pour. She wondered for a moment if the howl had been a dog in distress somewhere. Couldn't bring herself to care if it had.

She continued to shiver. Wondered if her teeth would break before she got so cold she'd stop moving altogether.

 _Hypothermia_.

Delirium.

This wasn't a pretty way to go. Neither was drowning, really, but Jan was pretty sure that was quicker than slowly losing your mind and freezing to death. Face still upturned, she closed her eyes against the onslaught of raindrops that seemed to be made of ice rather than water.

Who had the man with the pale blue eyes, soft voice and funny glasses been? Who had those other men been? And the beautiful woman? It had been dry where they were. Safe.

 _That's why it had to have been a hallucination._

No. It had been so _real_. His touch…cold hands…the room-temperature sweet-tasting water he'd helped her drink. The sanitized cup and straw. The smell all hospital rooms have of alcohol, antiseptic, packaged needles and other medical equipment, metal, bleach, crisp white sheets. She'd been in the hospital enough with her mom to know the conglomeration of scents intimately.

Only that room hadn't held the one hospital odor she hated most: the smell of Death.

Her head dropped back down onto her arms. A hollow ache starting in her belly grew and grew, like physical hunger but more consuming. It felt like blackness invading her body cell by cell. It took a few moments of feeling it to recognize it.

Despair.

Nobody had come for her; it'd all been a dream. Nobody _would_ come for her.

A hot, pinprick shiver started at the crown of her head and the soles of her feet at the same time, rocketing down and up until the mirrored sensations met in her gut where they exploded, forcing an uncontrollable sob out of her diaphragm, up through her throat and into the darkness of the unending rain.

When her voice gave out, her eyes opened.

What she saw brought it back…and made her scream.

* * *

"What is this treachery?" he bellowed, right arm sweeping out and catching his aide in the throat.

The aide dropped to the ground, windpipe crushed.

"You asked for the portal to be opened," was the hissed, low-decibel reply.

He glared at the fang-filled, leathery face. "To the other Earth!"

Her grin was as cocky as it was sickening. For all his experience with his demonic legions – and with her, their princess – it still made his gut twist to have to submit to her inhuman charms in order to get what he wanted. As if her gray, taut skin wasn't clammy enough to the touch, it was punctuated by yellowing pointed teeth, blood-red eyes and claws like gigantic eagles' talons.

To think he had once been entranced with such a monster.

"This is not the other Earth. It is _this_ Earth!"

"No, Batu, you are wrong. This woman atop this roof _is_ of the other Earth. Do you not see that you are looking through the portal I have opened?"

She may have been a deceitful, conniving bitch when dealing with her own kind, but she had never lied to him in all the years he'd been commanding her and her followers. And of course he saw the portal. A rip in the fabric separating two dimensions was hardly something someone of his abilities could miss.

"How is it possible that both Earths are in such a state?" he asked, genuinely curious even as visions of his grand plans crumbling beyond repair filled his mind.

"You have no idea what you've been doing, do you?"

He turned to look at her, eyes wide. "What are you talking about?"

She shook her head. "Mortals. So foolish. You have been working to open this doorway to the other Earth for six of your years, Batu."

"I know how long I've been working on it! And for what?" He gestured to the cowering young woman on the rooftop just the other side of the portal, whose mouth was stuck open in a now-silent scream. "The same thing I am leaving?"

Patience gone, she erupted. "You _caused_ this!"

His scowl disappeared. New information permeated his thoughts. His arm dropped to his side. "Explain."

"Everything you have done to open a doorway between these two dimensions has disrupted the fabric of _both_!" she cried out in frustration over the puniness of her human master's brain. "This!" Here she raised both of her arms, pointing toward windows on opposite sides of the temple room where torrential rains were all that could be seen. "This is the direct result of what _you_ have been doing!"

"Why didn't you warn me?"

"Would you have listened?"

"It is your duty to tell me everything!"

"It is my _duty_ to do what you tell me to, not give you knowledge that humans are not allowed to have!"

His hands balled into fists. Fury filled his veins. "You did this on purpose," he seethed. "You knew what my efforts would bring and you wanted it to happen!"

She rocked back on the single hind-toes of each foot, their talons clacking against the stone floor. "Now why would I want two Earths destroyed? I need human souls to survive." She licked her lips with her long, wet, forked tongue. "Souls like yours, Batu Belah Gaat."

He shook with a rage that even got the demon princess's attention. "You are telling me that the reason my Earth and the other Earth are in this condition is because I have been working to weaken the wall between them."

She nodded once, noticeably taking a step back. He couldn't hurt her on his own, but she never knew what other tricks a master _ahli sihir_ , a warlock, like him had up his sleeve. After all, he had that unbelievably powerful half-brother. For all she knew, they'd made their peace and he would show up and banish her forever. It was unnerving to her how easily this mortal blocked his thoughts from her.

"I can only do what you ask me. I cannot tell you that which you are not allowed to know. Even if I tried, it would come out as gibberish, unintelligible to you. You know this!"

He caught movement out of his peripheral vision and turned just as a horizontal bolt of lightning surged from somewhere on the other side of the woman on the roof in the other dimension, cocooned her body and headed straight for him.

There wasn't even time to close his eyes. But he heard the demon scream.

* * *

Kyrano buckled, gasped, and went down to the floor in a heap, lungs trying desperately to draw in air. Brains yelped and rushed to his side. A cacophony of voices asked questions but Brains ignored them, lifting Kyrano into his arms and racing into the quarantine hospital room only to find—

"Holy _shit_!"

"What the hell's going on?"

"Who _is_ that?"

"My God! Parker! Weapon!"

"H'it can't be!"

"It _is_ , Parker!"

"Penny, what—?"

Brains screeched to a halt just inside the room's door. There on the table…the old woman was gone. The younger strawberry blonde woman was now there. And she was screaming at the top of her lungs.

But she wasn't alone.

She scrambled off the bed and ran out into the observation lounge, leaving Brains holding a gasping Kyrano in his arms, flanked by Penelope and Parker, and staring at a very tall bald Asian man next to something that looked for all the world like some artists' renderings of a demon.

The Asian's eyes darted to Brains, to the man he carried, to Penny and Parker…beyond Brains where the Tracys, Tin-Tin and the twenty-something victim stood, and slowly…ever so slowly…a smile crept across his face.

"Well," he said, standing straight and tall as Jeff, Scott and the rest of the Tracy men moved into the room. "If it isn't International Rescue."


	10. Chapter Ten

Chapter Ten

"Who are you?" Jeff demanded to know.

"That," Tin-Tin stated, boldly stepping forward to stand next to Brains, who was now cradling a completely still and unconscious Kyrano in his arms, "is my half-uncle."

"What?" Alan breathed, immediately moving to her side.

"Niece," the bald man said evenly with a nod of his head. "How you've grown. So lovely. Just like your mother."

Tin-Tin's face was as stone. Her eyes were round as saucers, but she made no reply.

Brains swallowed hard. "What have you done to Kyrano?" he asked.

The bald man laughed out loud. "I have done nothing, scientist, save exist." He looked over his shoulder where his demon princess glared at those around them. "But I can, if you wish."

Backing up several steps until he bumped into the wall, Brains shook his head, clutching Kyrano to himself even more tightly. Jeff, Scott, Virgil and John filled in the space between the two half-brothers as Gordon came to Alan's side. Penelope and Parker moved into position next to Jeff, guns raised.

"So," Penelope said flatly. "The man I know as the Hood is Kyrano's half-brother."

Jeff turned to stare at her wide-eyed.

"Not that this information will do you any good now," the Hood responded with a deferential nod, "but yes."

"Sonofabitch," Alan cursed quietly, hand moving to grasp Tin-Tin's. She squeezed his back so hard he thought all the bones might just break.

"I have been called worse," the Hood stated, then looked up at the demon again. "I have new work for you."

She bowed before him. "I am yours to command, _Induk_."

"Master?" Tin-Tin repeated the word in English. "Oh, no."

Alan looked sharply at her, wondering what she was thinking. What it was she knew that the rest of them did not.

The smile that distorted the Hood's face made the blood of every member of International Rescue run cold. Gordon poked Alan's ribs, then whispered into his ear, "We need to keep Kyrano away from him."

Alan nodded as Gordon slid away from his side. The aquanaut grabbed hold of Brains' arm and pulled him, with Kyrano, back out into the observation room. Shortly thereafter, Alan saw Brains nod and scurry out of the observation room with Gordon on his heels. The hiss of the sliding door was covered by the demonic laugh coming from inside the hospital room. Alan turned his attention back to the spectacle of something he never knew existed outside of fairy tales, but now stood before them larger than life.

"Parker," Penelope said, voice as hard as quadritanium.

"Yes, milady," Parker replied.

Without warning the two fired their laser pistols.

The Hood's hands went up even as the demon screeched and the young woman darted back into the room in a blind panic. Tin-Tin caught her and shoved her behind John and Virgil. The laser shots bounced away from the Hood's hands. His low, menacing laugh was the backdrop to the sound of the demon's wings unfurling, smashing lights and cabinets and banging holes into the concrete walls as she turned in a full circle.

The humans all ducked to avoid being hit. John turned, grabbed his grandmother, the victim they'd rescued and Tin-Tin and started herding them out of the room.

"No!" Tin-Tin protested while Alan tried pushing her out, too. "I have to help!"

"If he gets his hands on you," Alan said, heart clenching at the thought, meeting her flashing green eyes.

The demon charged forward. Everyone backed up further and further until they managed to squeeze through the door, eyes never leaving the winged creature headed their way. Penny and Parker kept firing to no avail.

When the demon couldn't get through the doorway to reach them, she simply smashed through. Sparks flew as electrical lines were cut, the lights flickering and then going out altogether.

All members of International Rescue turned on their watch lights. An eerie glow and silence descended. The victim whimpered from behind John, where Ruth's arms were holding her tight.

Alan's blood curdled when Tin-Tin pulled away from his grasp and stepped forward, right to the front of the oddly-shaped triangle of Tracys. She raised her hands in the air as Alan whispered fiercely, "Tin-Tin!"

"Ah, I see you think you can do battle with me." The Hood stepped around his demon, holding a hand up to stay her. "Child," he tsked, shaking his head at his half-niece, "you are no match for the powers from beyond. Your father never was, either."

"Perhaps not," she said evenly, strongly. Alan felt a zap of pride go through him. "But I think I know how to slow you down at least."

Alan frowned.

The Hood cocked his head. "Do you, now?" He took a step forward. Alan moved protectively to her side. "And how, pray tell, might you do so when I have a demon princess at my command?"

She smiled in a way Alan had never seen her smile before. It made his heart stutter as it hit home who the love of his life was related to. He swallowed hard.

"Even demons," Tin-Tin replied, "can be banished."

The Hood laughed.

The demon snarled.

Scott moved to stand on Tin-Tin's other side, flanked by Virgil. John, Jeff, Parker and Penny formed a second row. The doors behind them which led to Brains' laboratory swished open when the auxiliary power kicked in and the lights flickered back on. Gordon and Brains stole into the room, Gordon quickly handing everyone a weapon before coming to stand by Penny's side.

Brains walked up to the front of the group, swallowing hard, blocking Tin-Tin and her raised hands. "What are you doing?" she hissed. "Get out of my way!"

Alan saw, as he was sure everyone did, that Brains held something in his arms. Something he recognized from last week's Scientific Show-and-Tell as they called it, when Brains had shared a new invention with them all. Alan's mind raced as he tried figuring out what the hell Brains meant to do with it.

What could a modified hybrid nuclear-thermophotovoltaic generator do here and now?

Generator.

Alan's eyes widened.

 _Electricity_.

He quickly put his hands on Tin-Tin's arms to force them to lower. She opened her mouth to protest but he shook his head, eyes darting to Brains and back to hers. She stilled as her eyes rested on the invention she herself had been helping Brains fine-tune. The smile that had been on her face, that had been starting to scare Alan out of his wits, faded. It was replaced by a smile of knowing.

"Weapons ready," Jeff said, and Alan knew he'd figured it out as well.

They all raised the laser and machine pistols and rifles Gordon had handed out.

"You fools," the Hood chided, taking one more step forward and standing so close to Brains he could've spit on him without effort. "Your weapons are useless against us." His eyes moved to the milk crate-sized contraption in Brains' arms. "And what can a ridiculous metal box do to me?" he asked, reaching out to poke the shiny silver exterior as his eyes roved up the single antenna that protruded from the top of it.

"This," Brains replied, his voice shaking as much as he was. He pressed a button on the back, where the Hood couldn't see, and the NT machine came to life with a high-pitched whine that pierced the eardrums of everyone present. That, the entire reason it hadn't been accepted in its current form, shattered what little glass had remained intact in the observation and hospital rooms.

Everyone covered their ears except for Brains, who stood steadfast, no longer shaking, but instead staring at the man whose finger was now, quite literally, glued to the metal box by the most formidable mixture of gravity and electricity on Earth. The Hood's body vibrated as the machine sent powerful waves of electricity into his body through that small point of contact…electrocuting him in a most agonizingly slow way thanks to the artificial gravity also pulling him forward.

Brains was pushed a step back by the force of it. Only because of his jerky movements did Alan realize Brains was wearing a short-sleeved shirt. Meaning his bare arms as well as his hands were touching the box. Meaning—

"NO!" Alan yelled, firing at the Hood and simultaneously wrenching the box from Brains' grasp. His gun clattered to the floor as he felt the electricity enfold him, envelop him. He tried forcing his way through it to separate Brains from the box.

The demon roared as Alan felt his heart flop all over the place. As the female victim screamed. As everyone started yelling.

Then the box was gone from his grasp. He was just conscious enough to see that Scott had grabbed it away from him as Brains was being pulled away by Gordon and John, then turned and hurled it toward the demon right when the bullet Alan had fired hit the Hood square in the center of his chest. He went down but tried to get right back up while a white-hot bolt of lightning expanded and enveloped the demon.

Virgil ran forward, grabbed the Hood with both hands, lifted him from the floor as he bellowed in Malay, and launched him at the cocooned demon. With a blinding flash, the demon and the Hood disappeared.

Alan felt Tin-Tin take his hand as a very wobbly Kyrano appeared in the lab doorway. Tears shone in her eyes as she turned to look up at her father. "Is he gone?"

A deep, shaky breath and a small nod of his head was all her father could offer. Alan managed to get to a sitting position with Tin-Tin's help while Virgil and Scott roused the engineer who'd saved the day. When Brains' eyes blinked open, Alan smiled. But it was only when the girl...the strawberry-blonde-headed victim...knelt at Brains' side, that Brains smiled back.


	11. Chapter Eleven

Chapter Eleven

The old woman was exhausted to the point that, when the blinding flash of light appeared and deposited two newcomers onto the roof of the pharmacy, she wasn't at all surprised by the lightning or the man. Nor by the demon. For by this point, she was convinced she'd both gone insane and that it was the time of the second coming of Christ.

Armageddon.

"What the hell happened?" the bald man yelled into the wind as the large winged creature stumbled backward and barely kept from falling off the roof. The old woman, Janice, figured the thing could probably fly, though, with wings that large.

"You _idiot_!" the creature – _demon_ , Janice's mind supplied – shrieked.

The rain continued to pour down.

"I am shot, only barely beginning to heal! I have done nothing!"

"You touched that contraption the engineer was holding!"

"Which did what?" he bellowed.

Janice, in spite of her predicament there seated in two inches of water, wondered at the exchange. Wondered who these two were. Wondered where the nice, warm place with the nice group of young men and women had gone.

Wondered if the rain would ever stop.

"In much the same manner as the lightning from this dimension came through the portal to ours and took us to Tracy Island, so, too, did the device the scientist held generate a cocoon of lightning which did the exact opposite! Feeble-minded human! You have banished us!"

The bald man with a gaping wound on his chest stared up at the ugly demon's face. At first he didn't seem to understand her words. Janice most certainly didn't understand them. But then a look of comprehension crossed his face. It was quickly followed by what Janice could only think of as a look of pure fear.

"What do mean, banished?" he finally asked.

Throwing her hands – such as they were each with four clawed, bony fingers – into the air, the demon plopped back on what Janice presumed was supposed to be her rump, but which was more the base of her tail than anything.

"Batu, what they did was send us through my portal into the other dimension. The one _you_ meant to take over. The one in which the young woman was on this very roof, when you saw her from your _tem_ ple!"

The one the demon had called Batu turned quickly to face Janice, who didn't have the energy to do much more than stare dully at them. After what her aged body had been through it was about all she could do to continue breathing. She met his hard stare unflinchingly, silently begging God for a merciful death, just to get the agony of popping in and out of strange places and being soaked to the bone all the time, over with.

"That is not the woman we saw on the roof!" Batu yelled to be heard over the incessant drum of the rain. "That woman is _old_!"

The demon shook her head like she was faced with trying to explain the color 'red' to a two-year old child. "She is our dimension's counterpart to the woman you saw. You know that Time does not work the same between dimensions. The Earth you wished to rule, _this_ Earth, is fifty-one years in the past of _our_ Earth. The woman we saw was the younger version of this one. This is _her_ Earth. My portal combined with the electrical output of _Thunderbird Two_ and the natural lightning strike blew the whole thing to _hell_! And your stupid ego brought both us and this older woman here, while leaving her younger version _there_!"

Janice shook her head, not able to understand what was being said. Portal? Dimension? A younger version of herself? These two were insane. Then again, considering she was the one seeing a big bald Asian guy and a demon pop out of nowhere onto the roof of a pharmacy during Armageddon, perhaps it was _she_ who was insane.

The bald man suddenly dropped to his knees, palms slapping noisily to his drenched bare chest. "What…" His voice trailed off. Even in the gloom, Janice could tell he didn't look very good at all. "What is happening?" he asked, then fell forward, one hand catching him, keeping him from faceplanting on the roof. "Why…why has the wound from Tracy's gun ceased healing?"

He turned his head to look up at the demon, which rose to its three-toed feet, then gracefully hopped backward to perch on the edge of the short wall surrounding the roof like a gargoyle that'd eaten too many Wheaties. Janice couldn't help the dry chuckle at the image of a baby demon eating a bowl of cereal that crept into her mind.

Which she knew she was starting to lose completely at this point.

"In banishing us to this place you have damned us both."

"Reopen the portal!" he demanded, going upright on his knees but unable to rise to his feet. "Open it now, I command you!"

Janice watched wide-eyed as the demon unfurled its wings completely. The span had to be fifteen feet if it was an inch. She could hardly believe the sheer size of the thing and wondered if it ate people. She supposed there were worse ways to go, though at the moment she couldn't quite think of one.

"I have no power here. I was never meant to come here. This Earth has its own demon realm. I can neither open a portal nor save my own life once they learn that a demon princess from another realm has invaded theirs. No power," she stated, pointing at her chest, "means no power," she finished, pointing at his.

That didn't sound good. Janice was quite happy to be a little old lady getting ready to either drown or starve, rather than the bald guy, who seemed to be about to bleed out if the red running down his torso was any indication. She flinched when the demon raised its head and looked directly at her. Maybe it _was_ going to eat her.

"You, human," the demon said in a much softer tone of voice even as the one called Batu fell to the roof on his side, facing Janice. "You will perish here, for the damage he has done to your world cannot be undone now that I, too, am here." It shook its head, out of pity for itself or Janice, the human couldn't be certain. "For that, you have him to blame," it told her, pointing down at the ailing bald man. "But you may go to your death easily, knowing that the younger version of yourself, who once dwelled here in this dimension, now has a new chance for a full life."

Janice tried hard to wrap her failing mind around the words. She tried desperately to understand why such a strange and evil being would try to offer her words of comfort. As if reading her thoughts, the demon, wings flapping once, explained with a grimace that she supposed was meant to be a grin.

"Perhaps if I show one kindness, the Lord of all that exists will spare me when the demons from your realm attack." The creature shrugged. "And if not, consider yourself lucky that I won't stay here where you'd wind up being torn to shreds as well."

With that, the ugly monster that was the stuff of human nightmares gave three mighty flaps of its wings and sailed into the black sky from which rain still poured relentlessly, leaving behind a stunned, confused woman and a most likely dying man.

"Please," Batu said, hand reaching out, fingers looking like they were trying to grasp something. "Help me."

Lightning flashed overhead. Janice looked to the west as another bolt streaked in five fingers across the sky. She saw a gigantic wall of black headed their way and knew even if she did go near Batu it wouldn't do him any good. The time had come for her to die. So she closed her eyes.

"Please!" Batu begged.

She reopened her eyes. The last thing she saw was his face full of fear. But the last thought she had was fervently hoping the demon had been right. That somewhere, on another Earth not under a deluge, a younger version of herself would live on.


	12. Chapter Twelve

Chapter Twelve

Slowly she trudged through water that was up to her knees. She thought she'd heard a noise in this direction, and Scott had told her not to go beyond the cordoned-off section of the block where he and Virgil were working to save lives. She'd been allowed to come along only because it was all hands on deck now that the rains had ended. Even Grandma – who'd insisted Jan call her that, too – had gone to the family's home in Kansas to look after the many relatives they had in the state, leaving no one on Tracy Island, meaning they couldn't leave Jan there alone.

And though none of them really had a handle on all that had transpired, they'd realized pretty quickly that Jan was precisely who she said she was – Janice Marcia Jenkins – and the only reason her fingerprints had not been found in AFIS while the elder Janice's had, was because she – the younger from elsewhere, apparently – had burned the pads of all four fingers and the thumb of her right hand on a metal teapot as a child, effectively destroying most of their whorls and forever changing the fingerprints on that hand.

A fact that the beautiful woman named Lady Penelope was quite angry that she'd overlooked.

But the family had been kind to Jan. The one with the soft blue eyes and shy demeanor who insisted she call him Brains - whose hands were indeed always cold - had numerous theories that she couldn't comprehend. He was forever spouting sentences that contained words like 'dimensions' and 'portals' to the point where she'd had to stop listening to him for how it made her head hurt. Didn't stop her from watching him, though. He was quite entrancing when he really got into a subject.

The Hood – the bald guy, she'd learned, who was also half-brother to the one of their number named Kyrano (she didn't see the resemblance) and the half-uncle of the nice lady named Tin-Tin (again, no resemblance whatsoever but then again, none of the five brothers looked alike either, truth be told) had called them 'International Rescue' in front of her. And so the family had decided Jan was a security risk and better kept with them for the duration. She'd tried to tell them she'd never heard of International Rescue, nor of Tracy Corporation or an astronaut named Jeff Tracy, but they'd refused to believe that was possible.

Jan couldn't complain, however. She'd discovered that the entire portion of the Midwest she'd come from – all of Iowa, all of Missouri and all of Indiana, actually – were pretty much gone. The New Lake, people were calling it. Her entire town had been decimated according to what little information was being broadcast on NTBS. Another thing that was weird. She'd never heard of that television station, nor of any of the others they got on their island.

The whole situation was just plain bizarre as far as she was concerned. But the reality was the reality, however odd it felt to her. So many people around the world had died. And now, International Rescue – and Jan – were working hard to try and save those left behind on rooftops or in houses or on higher ground but still unable to get to safety on their own. She'd only had about two days' worth of training from Scott and Virgil, and wasn't qualified (according to them) to do much more than look for people and then call them when she found anyone alive.

A loud bark startled Jan out of her reverie. She looked up to find a dog peering out at her through a half-broken second floor window. Her heart leapt. She'd found someone! He was a German Shepherd, a young one, from the look of him. The dog barked again.

"Hang on!" she called out to him, adjusting the suspender straps that held her waders up. She lifted her left wrist to her face. "Jan to Scott."

"Scott here." She couldn't quite believe how these things worked, these watches. That his face was _right there_ in the watch face was amazing to her. Apple's iPhones had nothing on these guys.

"I found someone," she smiled, then looked up. "A dog." She looked back down at Scott in time to see him grin.

"Virgil will be right over to help," he stated. "Your first rescue victim, Jan. How's it feel?"

"It's a dog," she said, and he laughed. Then she looked back up at the fuzzball, whose tail wagged furiously. "And it's wonderful," she whispered.

Fifteen minutes later, as Virgil made his way carefully through the house where the only sign of life was the dog trapped in an upstairs bedroom, Jan looked around the West Coast town of…she couldn't even remember which one they were in right now. It was pretty devastated, but the sky was so blue and there wasn't a cloud to be seen. She could hear birds singing and somewhere not far away the sounds of laughter, as though loved ones had just been reunited thanks to the efforts of this interesting, wonderful group of people she had suddenly been thrust into.

She regretted her mother's death, though Scott had told her he'd found no remains anywhere in the house she'd claimed was hers when he'd done reconnaissance there three weeks earlier. There's been no sign of anything or anyone on the still-standing pharmacy building's roof either. Jan had tried to find her sister, and Lady Penelope was even put on the case, but so far no trace of Jeannie ever existing had been found. If Brains was right, and Jan had come from some other dimension, she supposed it made sense. He claimed things were different between the two dimensions. Hers had no International Rescue, for example, while this one had no Jeannie Jenkins.

Too much for Jan to try and make sense of. All she knew was that the world had nearly ended but for some reason, she had been spared.

So Jan just did what she could. And when the brother who'd gone after her victim for her called out her name and she turned to find his arms full of a happy, wiggling dog, she couldn't help but laugh out loud at his struggle to contain the wet bundle of fur.

"Here's your first saved life," Virgil said, finally managing to hike the dog under his right arm. "Come on, let's get him to _Two_. Brains ought to be able to find some dog food in the lockers somewhere."

Jan nodded and happily followed in Virgil's wake, wondering if she would ever _really_ know what had happened to her. How she'd flipped back and forth between being on the pharmacy roof and being in the hospital room on Tracy Island. Whether that winged thing had really been a demon as she'd heard Tin-Tin insist. Where the creature and the half-brother had come from and then disappeared to. And why everyone had thought Jan should be an old lady of seventy-eight.

Even if she never did know all the facts, she thought she could probably die a pretty happy woman. She had a new family that was big and loving and not very forthcoming with information, but they were treating her well and inviting her to be part of their world. They were giving a purpose to her life she never would have fathomed for herself: saving others. Suddenly practicing law, the passion that had been hers since watching reruns of _Perry Mason_ and _Matlock_ in her youth, seemed so trivial in comparison to this newfound career.

As soon as Virgil set the German Shepherd down inside the pod, it barked and bounded up to Jan, knocking her completely off her feet and licking her face like crazy. She and Virgil both laughed out loud at the pup's antics even as Brains stepped forward from the direction of _Two's_ lab to pull the overly excited guy away from her.

"He really seems to like you." Brains grinned at her. "We might have to convince Mr. Tracy to let us bring a dog to the island after all."

Apparently, she also now had a dog. And the twinkle in Brains' eyes as his smile stayed in place and his gaze lingered on hers, told her maybe something even more than that.

**END**


End file.
